All shops have to be assigned to you prior to doing them. When you request them in the system, the schedulers review requests and assign shops as they deem appropriate.

If you are talking about cellphone shops (where you physically go into a cellphone store), those are found and requested on the Available Shops page, and if you are taking about the phone shops that you can do from your home by making a phone call, those can be found on the Web and Telephone shops page, and requested there.

You can try contacting the schedulers once you have requested a shop, to ask if they would assign the shop to you.

I’m very new to this and only have done a couple simple shops thru another Mystery Shopper site. My question is this: Ive requested several “phone call only” shops which I do see all of them in my “requested” folder.

You mentioned to another shopper one has the option of contacting the scheduler to ask if these requested shops be assigned to me. How and where do I find the correct person to contact so that I don’t lose out on these potential shops?

On the main page, it says across the top that I can “self assign” up to 2 shops. Can I self assign two of these shops myself without contacting a scheduler? If so, what is the correct process of doing this?

Having the ability to "self-assign" through iSS does not guarantee that every company using iSS will allow you to self-assign their shops. Quite a few MSC's are hesitant to assign new shoppers, especially at the end of a month. Of course, it never hurts to contact the scheduler and make an inquiry. You should be able to find contact information for the scheduler on the job description. Click on the job application and take a look - there is nearly always contact information listed. There is no guarantee that you will get an answer, however. We are at the end of a month -and a quarter. Most schedulers are working especially hard right now to get enough assignments filled to satisfy MSC contracts with their clients.

You might try to self-assign a different shop or two. Even just getting one or two under your belt might sway hesitant schedulers to give you a shot on the shops that you really want. And, of course, you might have more luck at the beginning of April as schedulers are not pressed by time and feel they have more flexibility to work with somebody new.